Sensei Chad was one of the earliest students in the evolution of Shen Chuan. Back in the days when the Professor, Eugene and Coy were beating up each other in Eugene's back yard and scaring all of the neighbors, for those of you who are new to the system. Sensei Chad has since gone on to be a Police Officer in Austin, Texas. That's our state capitol for those of you who snoozed through political science. And though we don't see much of him these days, all of us old timer's like to reminisce about the endless footwork and stances he made us endure... right...

So here's a little insight into the early days of Shen Chuan by Sensei Chad Francois:

I was in English Comprehension class, at Stephen F. Austin State University taught by Dr. Hugincudle*. It was a small University in the quaint town of Nacogdoches, Texas. The classroom was full as it was a required course for my degree. There were only 5 guys in the class and we all sat in the rear of the room. I really didn't know anybody in the class but somehow I started talking to the guy next to me, Greg Stephenson. I guess we bonded because of our mutual disgust of the Professor who was this hyper-liberal, fema-nazi, touchy-feely, everyone-is-a-victim type. Her views really stuck out in the conservative Bible belt of the Piney Woods of deep East Texas. One of the stories we had to 'comprehend' was of a military nature. Greg and I didn't agree with her perception of the story and we let her know it, in what evolved into a very passionate debate. After class, Greg and I continued on about the story and military protocol, which eventually led us to the topic of modern hand-to-hand combat. I told him that I had my First degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and that I was currently studying with the University club in the evenings and taking the University course for my physical education credit. He told me that he had been to a Martial Arts class, off campus, that was taught by a guy named Terry Thoburn. He said he wasn't sure of the art's name but "the guy does some really cool Highlander stuff with swords". I said that I wasn't really interested in spending my time learning an art that wasn't practical. I didn't want to spend hours practicing with a sword that isn't practical, or legal, to carry. He continued on saying that Terry did a lot of throwing stuff too, without weapons. We talked some more and I figured I'd go and watch a class.

A few days later, I followed Greg to the dojo. It was at the end of a small street next to a creek, 211 West Pillar Street. The building apparently used to be some kind of an unloading station for trains. It was right next to the the train tracks and it had a very large, deep, open-top storage pit in the concrete slab in one of the corners. The structure was made of cinder block, with exposed metal rafters and a huge roll-up metal door next to a standard glass entry door. It was being used as a Tae Kwon Do Dojang at the time. The Instructor was a man named Richard Metteauer. The class Greg was referring to met in this building after the Tae Kwon Do classes finished.

Greg said that I would be able to work out with them so I brought the appropriate attire. I didn't want to seem disrespectful so I showed up in my uniform sans black belt. We walked in and Greg pointed out the two instructors, Terry and a guy named Joe Lansdale. They were both involved in conversations across the room. There I was, 6'2", 175 pounds, 19 years old, studying for my Second Degree Black Belt, and in great physical shape. I had sparred all kinds of people and already whipped the dog snot out of the 'top' student at the University club. The instructor of the club always had an excuse not to spar me, as did the professor in the University course. At my old school, in Houston, I had worked out at least three times a week, two hours at a time for almost three years. At demonstrations I broke boards higher than 7' in the air. My instructor would sit on the shoulders of another student while that student was standing on a chair. Other times I broke boards stacked 4 deep - all before I tested for my Black Belt. Greg shows me these two instructors - both appeared in their mid-forties. Terry was so thin he had to stop twice to make a shadow, and Joe had the beginnings of that gut that comes with middle age. Neither of them came close to 6'00" and I was afraid I would break one of them.

I have never since made such a gravely erroneous assumption.

Joe and Terry had been talking with different students when I first saw them. Joe approached me first. He had this huge grin across his face. He extended an open hand well in advance of handshake range. He gave me a loud and cheerful greeting. He introduced himself and welcomed me to the class. Noticing my uniform, he asked what I had studied. I told him and he said that he had studied Tae Kwon Do himself some years back. I told him that I wasn't really interested in tournaments and he said that they would teach me whatever I wanted to know. He then eagerly said something to the effect of, "let me show you some of what we do here." He told me to get in a stance. I got into my "perfect", Black-Belt polished, 70-30% fighting stance. Suddenly Joe was all over me. All I remembered seeing was a flurry of hands. It didn't last more than a second and a half and he was back in front of me standing erect and explaining more about the class. It actually took a while for my brain to process the physical contact. I distinctly remember my back leg being struck and my back itself had been hit a few times. I couldn't figure out how he had hit me so many times without ever changing his angle of attack and I could have sworn he was never behind me. His speed was amazing, I was pretty quick but this guy just blew me away. As I stood there still bewildered, he said, "Or we'll do something like this." Again, I was stuck with several light blows. However, when he finished this time, I was in a lock that was very effective and I couldn't see him. That was my introduction to Joe's Kenpo. O.K., I don't have to worry about breaking this guy.

I put my keys and shoes with everyone else's and then I met Terry. He had seen Joe's introduction. As he came over to me, he was chuckling in way that made his entire torso bounce, kinda like Santa does. He was apparently amused at what he had seen. He was quieter; a very soft-spoken man that seemed more laid back and docile than Joe. He explained his roots in Shotokan Karate. He had earned a high Black Belt in that but was fonder of the art of Aikido. He had dreamed of studying in Japan and clearly preferred it. I had never seen it and I was curious. I was told that the school was teaching Matsukaze Budo - The Wind Through The Pines Way of the Warrior. It was mainly Joe's Kenpo and Terry's Aikido, but the two had studied several other arts and their influences were not excluded.

As I learned more about the two, I realized a union that helped make this school so great. Joe was a professional writer with a wife and two kids. He was successful, financially comfortable and a great example of the American dream. Terry had a degree in Engineering from Florida. He owned a Chevy El Camino, a dog, a violin and an AM radio. A carpenter by trade, he had traveled the world and was a minimalist. Joe was loud and always "on". Terry was laid back and relaxed. Joe's style was hard and Terry's was soft.  They were the inverse of each other in so many ways, yet they worked so well together. The techniques were, of course, new to the students. I couldn't help but see the Yin-Yang personified in their relationship.

Class began and it was very small, as the school was very new. There were several nights that the class was no more than 4 students. I went to class regularly. I had a part time job at Radio Shack and I took enough hours at the University to get my Bachelor's in three years, but I managed to average 10 hours of Matsukaze a week. I already had one Black Belt so I didn't need to be taught how to stand, how to kick, how to move. I had to change some things because it was a different art, but I was already way ahead of the rest of the class. I quickly found myself in a unique position. Joe and Terry were so good at what they did, and their 'finer points' of movement were so second nature to them, that there was a gap between them and the students. I found myself filling this gap. Joe and Terry would have undoubtedly filled this gap themselves eventually, but I found myself to be a sort of catalyst that accelerated the learning process. It was basically these 'finer points' that all new students miss. I had taught for two years at my school in Houston. I was given the younger and lower classes to teach so I had some recent experience with teaching the very new. Here was a very new, but mainly adult class. These 'finer points' were the details that make a technique work. An illustration of a 'finer point' is what I would call concrete feet. Typically, a new student, for some reason, does not want to move their feet. As you are attacked, move out of line with the attack. Basic, common sense, right? Not really. The word "move" will not suffice for a beginner. I watched Joe demonstrate a technique over and over, and then I watched the students try to duplicate it with obvious frustration. The students would not move their feet; I was in the position of explaining how to move. Joe took care of the strikes and overall technique, but I would translate "move" into "slide your feet", or "take a little step off-line". The techniques were, of course, new to the students. They would focus on the hand movements, and eventually be able to execute them properly, but they had ignored the footwork. They would become so focused on learning the hand technique that they would completely forget that they even had feet.

As time went on, I found myself working more with Joe than Terry. Terry's Aikido was exemplary and I personally found it fascinating. I had never studied it before so it was completely new to me. I commonly refer to it as moving ju-jitsu. It is a locking art that throws the attacker while putting them in a lock. With many of these throws, the attacker is airborne, and lands 15 or more feet away. As a new school, we only had one mat and it was about 4'x6'. We used to have to aim for the mat so our partners would land there instead of on the concrete floor with its thin layer of carpeting. It was always discerning when Terry would place the mat 10 feet or so behind him and then tell me to punch a hole through his gut, as he smiled. The class would gather around, I would throw a hard, dedicated punch, and I would end up square on that mat, trying to find where everyone had gone. It is definitely practical, but it is soft. My background was in Tae Kwon Do, a 'hard' art and Joe was mainly teaching Kenpo, another 'hard' art. So I naturally found his style easier to digest. He would often take me aside and teach me a new technique or two a night. It was relatively easy for me to pick up and I learned a lot of material quickly. In Tae Kwon Do we had what we called One-Step Sparring. These were pre-determined techniques to deal with various attacks. We had to learn 10 per belt in order to test. I really liked these and they made more sense than the patterns we were taught. In Matsukaze we called them Kihon-Waza - The Way of Movement. In Tae Kwon Do we numbered them, in Kenpo they are named. Joe is a creative guy so we kind of named them ourselves - Elbow Blizzard, Renegade Lobster, Passing Tornado, Little Brown Gopher Throws a Turd and Dies (told you he was creative). Joe even had a nickname for Matsukaze Budo - he called it East Texas Whoop-Ass Aikider.  Joe taught me so many so fast that I needed to bring a note book to class to keep them all straight. This eventually became my teaching manual. As the class grew and progressed, others began to do them same. Mine was the most complete so we decided to use it as the class manual. One of the first students, Eugene Frizzell, took on the task of translating my writing and putting it on the computer. Soon manuals were created and students were given the appropriate material once they were at the appropriate level. Eugene was another one that I met my first day. Graceful was nowhere near an accurate description of him at the time, but he was one of the nicest men I have ever met. By the time I graduated college, that nice man was also one of the most dangerous men I knew. He and another long-time student, Coy Harry, went to a lot of seminars put on by Remy Pressas and they became highly skilled with Arnis sticks. Coy was another great guy. He was a Chemistry teacher and, despite his massive size and shiny bald head, he was very easy going. When he put his big body into his techniques, bad things were going to happen.

That was the way the school was run. Eugene and Coy taught what they knew better that anyone - the sticks. I taught our Green Belts to kick because kicking was my strong point. We were encouraged to go out and learn new things and bring them back to the school. Terry had developed an interest in Kyusho-Jitsu. This was the use of Acupressure points to increase the effectiveness of our techniques. Terry, Joe and I spent a lot of time knocking each other silly with pressure point strikes. That was a strong point of the school. It was really geared towards self-defense. There was no 'wasted learning'. We didn't have to learn "this and only this! There is nothing else but what we say!" That attitude is common in schools and I feel that it is self-defeating. If it worked, we used it. It changed all the time, in fact, at times it was frustrating because it changed so much that it was tough to keep a consistent lesson plan. I guess those were just the growing pains.

The school really caught on around town. I began to teach a strictly Kenpo children's class. Eugene and Coy began to teach a strictly Aikido class. The class sizes grew and remained rather consistent. I had been given my own key to the school long ago and came in late at night often. Occasionally a student would meet me there to work on a particular skill. The school was really flexible and it was run basically as a club. Dues were taken to keep the building lit and cooled and to help offset other related expenses.

By the time I graduated college, I had earned my Third Degree Black Belt in Matsukaze Budo, a First Degree Black Belt in Shen Chuan Kenpo and a First Degree Black Belt in Combat Hapkido.  As I was nearing graduation, Terry and Joe had, as I understand it, a falling out of sorts. Joe moved the school to a bigger building on Southeast Stallings Drive and the name became Shen Chuan Martial Science. Terry taught Aikido at the local recreation center some. Coy and Eugene went with Joe and are still teaching. I moved to Austin but I went back there for a knife-fighting seminar with W. Hock Hochheim. It's a five-hour drive so I don't get back there as much as I'd like to.

The Matsukaze School was only around for about three and a half years. Those were the three and a half years that I was there. I know that what I learned at that school has saved me from serious bodily injury on several occasions while engaged in my chosen profession. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a part of that school. I hope that I made a positive difference in someone's life while I was there. I miss it, and them.

* the name was changed to accommodate professional integrity.